Roadside Memorial Requested After SECOND Deadly Crash in Months on Same Highway

PETA Tribute Would Encourage Drivers to Travel Safely and Think About the Fates of All Road Users

For Immediate Release:
August 9, 2016

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

In the wake of Thursday’s incident in which a truck transporting 116 cows rolled over on I-71 and killed an unknown number of the animals—including seven who died in secondary wrecks when they and dozens of others bolted down the highway in fear—PETA rushed a letter yesterday to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet asking for approval to erect a 5-foot-tall tombstone memorial at the scene between mile markers 38 and 36. PETA’s letter comes after another tragic accident on the same stretch of highway just this past April, in which nearly 100 pigs died on their way to slaughter.

The tribute (image here) would feature an image of a cow next the words “In Memory of the Cows Who Suffered and Died at This Spot, August 2016. Try Vegan” and would remind all drivers, including those with animals on board, to travel safely—while pointing out that we can all prevent further animal suffering and death by going vegan.

“Over a short span, multiple crashes on this same stretch of highway have left dozens of animals mangled and suffering on an already terrifying trip to the slaughterhouse,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA’s roadside memorial will remind livestock transporters that the least they can do is drive safely and will encourage everyone on the road to think of the pain that these smart, sensitive animals endure for nothing more than a fleeting meal.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that before cows are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughterhouses, they suffer immensely on industrialized meat and dairy farms. These sensitive, curious animals spend their short lives on cramped, filthy feedlots without protection from extreme temperatures. Calves are torn away from their mothers within hours of birth and are castrated and branded without painkillers. At the slaughterhouse, workers shoot cows in the head with a captive-bolt gun, hang them up by one leg, cut their throats, and skin them—often while they’re still conscious.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.